FBI and ATF agents responded to a Nogales power plant after a makeshift bomb went off Wednesday.

A makeshift bomb exploded at a Nogales, Ariz. power plant Wednesday, rupturing a large fuel tank and prompting the FBI and federal bomb experts to respond.

Local officials were alerted at 9:30 a.m. to a call of “suspicious activity” at the UniSource Energy Services Valencia Plant. An explosion had ruptured a diesel storage tank and caused what Nogales Police Lt. Carlos Jimenez described as a relatively small spill that was confined to the immediate area.

Officials closed off the power plant and an adjacent car dealership on North Grand Avenue. The FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Arizona Department of Public Safety were called.

Agents were still processing the scene at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Arizona Corporation Commission spokesman Rebecca Wilder said there were no power disruptions related to the explosion and the plant sustained only minor damage.

“The reason for the high-scale response is the plant is an electrical substation and critical to the area,” Jimenez said, explaining that as many as 30,000 customers in the area – the entire town of Nogales and its environs – depends on the plant for power.

“The whole city of Nogales could have been compromised,” he added.

There were no reports of injuries and authorities said they knew of no suspects or witnesses.

They described the explosive as “a suspicious device,” but would not elaborate. The fuel did not ignite, Jimenez said.

Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of the D-Day invasion and President Obama failed to say anything about it. There is no released statement on WhiteHouse.govand nothing on the White House or Barack Obama twitter feeds about the anniversary. President Obama did not make any public remarks about the anniversary yesterday, either.

Terror suspects, fugitives and radical speakers have passed through the Cambridge mosque that the Tsarnaev brothers are known to have visited.

(Photo: Shakil Adil, AP)

Story Highlights

Cambridge mosque was founded in 1982 by students at MIT, Harvard and other Boston-area schools

Affiliated with Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors call an “overt arm” of Muslim Brotherhood

More than half of the $15.5 million used to found the Boston mosque came from Saudi sources

BOSTON — The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon double bombing has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.

Several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated for Islamic terrorism, including a conviction of the mosque’s first president, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in connection with an assassination plot against a Saudi prince.

Its sister mosque in Boston, known as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has invited guests who have defended terrorism suspects. A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

The head of the group is among critics who say the two mosques teach a brand of Islamic thought that encourages grievances against the West, distrust of law enforcement and opposition to Western forms of government, dress and social values.

“We don’t know where these boys were radicalized, but this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there,” said the head of the group, Charles Jacobs.

Yusufi Vali, executive director at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, insists his mosque does not spread radical ideology and cannot be blamed for the acts of a few worshipers.

“If there were really any worry about us being extreme,” Vali said, U.S. law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would not partner with the Muslim American Society and the Boston mosque in conducting monthly meetings that have been ongoing for four years, he said, in an apparent reference to U.S. government outreach programs in the Muslim community.

The Cambridge and Boston mosques, separated by the Charles River, are owned by the same entity but managed individually. The imam of the Cambridge mosque, Sheik Basyouny Nehela, is on the board of directors of the Boston mosque.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, attended the Cambridge mosque for services and are accused of setting two bombs that killed three people and injured at least 264 others at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indicated that either mosque was involved in any criminal activity, but mosque attendees and officials have been implicated in terrorist activity:

• Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque’s president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.

Aafia Siddiqui is shown after her graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Photo: AP)

• Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.

• Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.

• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna’s co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.

• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What both mosques have in common is an affiliation with the Muslim American Society, an organization founded in 1993 that describes itself as an American Islamic revival movement. It has also been described by federal prosecutors in court as the “overt arm” of the Muslim Brotherhood, which calls for Islamic law and is the parent organization of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Critics say the Muslim American Society promotes a fraught relationship with the United States, expressed in part by the pattern discussed by Americans for Progress and Tolerance in which adherents are made to feel cut off from their home country and to identify with a global Islamist political community rather than with America.

Zhudi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said the radical teachings often follow a theme of recitation of grievances that Islam has with the West, advocacy against U.S. foreign policy and terrorism prosecutions, and efforts “to evangelize Islam in order to improve Western society that is secularized,” he says.

Jasser, a veteran of the U.S. Navy and author of the 2012 book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot Fights to Save His Faith, says the teachings make some followers feel “like their national identity is completely absent and hollow, and that vacuum can be filled by (radical) Islamic ideology, which is supremacist and looks upon the West as evil.”

The Cambridge mosque was founded in 1982 by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and several other Boston-area schools, according to a profile by the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Its members founded the sister mosque in Boston in 2009.

The leadership of the two mosques is intertwined, and the ideology they teach is the same, Jacobs said. Ilya Feoktistov, director of research at Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said much of the money to create the Boston mosque came not from local Muslims but from foreign sources.

More than half of the $15.5 million used to found the Boston mosque came from Saudi sources, Feoktistov said, who cites financial documents that Jacobs’ group obtained when the mosque sued it for defamation. The lawsuit was later dropped.

Vali said that the vast majority of total donors were in the United States and that “no donations were accepted if the donor wanted to have any decision-making influence (even if benign).”

Vali characterized Americans for Peace and Tolerance and its founder, Jacobs, as anti-Muslim activists who spread “lies and half-truths in order to attack and marginalize much of the local Muslim community and many of its institutions.”

“It’s the new McCarthyism in full swing,” he said.

Sheik Basyouny Nehela, the imam of the Cambridge mosque, which is located across the Charles River from Boston, is on the board of directors for the Muslim American Society of Boston, which runs the Boston mosque. The Tsarnaevs attended the Cambridge mosque.

A statement issued by the Cambridge mosque said the Tsarnaev brothers were “occasional visitors.” The mosque’s office manager, Nichole Mossalam, said neither brother expressed radical views. “They never exhibited any violent sentiments or behaviors. Otherwise, they would have been reported,” Mossalam said.

The Cambridge mosque said Tsarnaev, 26, who died Thursday night in a shootout with police, “disagreed with the moderate American-Islamic theology” of the mosque. Tsarnaev challenged an imam who said in his sermon that it was appropriate to celebrate U.S. national holidays and was told to stop such outbursts, the mosque said in a statement.

Talal Eid, a Muslim chaplain at Brandeis University, said focusing on individual radicals that prayed in a building is unfair.

“In 2011, the two brothers were right under the nose of the FBI and they didn’t find anything,” Eid said, who never met the Tsarnaevs. “How do you want me as an imam to know enough to tell them they are not welcome here? How can I figure out those people have that kind of criminal intent?”

The Muslim American Society says on its website that it is independent of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, early Brotherhood literature is considered “the foundational texts for the intellectual component for Islamic work in America,” the website states.

Jacobs says claims of moderate Islam do not square with the mosque’s classic jihadi texts in its library and its hosting of radical speakers.

Jacobs said Ahmed Mansour, his co-director at Americans for Peace and Tolerance, found writings by Syed Qutb, the former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and other jihadi texts at the Cambridge mosque’s library when Mansour went there in 2003. Qutb pioneered the radical violent ideology espoused by al-Qaeda.

Yusuf al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader who espouses radical views in videos collected by Jacobs’ group, was listed as a trustee on the Cambridge mosque’s IRS filings until 2000, and on the mosque’s website until 2003, when he addressed congregants via recorded video message to raise money for the Boston mosque, according to a screenshot of the announcement that Feoktistov provided.

Vali said Qaradawi was listed as an honorary trustee years ago only because his scholarship and high esteem in Muslim circles would help with fundraising.

Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at the Boston mosque in April 2009, has advocated replacing U.S. democracy with Islamic rule and called Christians “filthy” polytheists whose “life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of Jihad,” according to a video obtained by Jacobs’ group.

Vali said Qadhi was a guest of a non-profit organization that was renting space at the Boston mosque and has changed his views since that video was made.

Jacobs and others say it is not only renters who express sympathetic views for terrorists. Leaders of the Boston and Cambridge mosques, and invited guests, have advocated on behalf of convicted terrorists, urging followers to seek their release or lenient sentences.

Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, sometimes a spokesman for the Boston mosque, used Siddiqui’s case to speak against the USA Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed under the George W. Bush administration. “After they’re done with (Siddiqui), they are going to come to your door if they feel like it,” he said, according to a video obtained by Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

Anwar Kazmi, a member of the Cambridge mosque’s board of trustees, called for leniency for Mehanna and Siddiqui at a Boston rally in February 2012, in a video posted to YouTube. He characterized Siddiqui’s 86-year sentence as excessive.

In an interview with USA TODAY, Kazmi insisted that the Cambridge mosque is moderate and condemns the marathon bombings. On Monday, the mosque e-mailed members to caution them that the FBI may question them and that they may want to seek representation.

“This kind of violence, terrorism, it’s just completely contrary to the spirit of Islam,” Kasmi said. “The words in the Quran say if anybody kills even a single human being without just cause, it’s as if you’ve killed all of humanity.”

DETROIT (AP) — A judge on Wednesday finalized a $700,000 settlement between McDonald’s Corp. and members of Michigan’s Muslim community over claims a suburban Detroit restaurant falsely advertised its food as prepared according to Islamic law.

Ahmed Ahmed, the Dearborn Heights man who represents plaintiffs in the class-action suit, claims he bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at the restaurant but found it wasn’t halal. Islam forbids consumption of pork, and God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

The McDonald’s restaurant chain and one of its franchise owners agreed in January to the tentative settlement that would be shared by Ahmed, as well as a Muslim-run Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers.

The two sides met Wednesday for final approval before Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen Macdonald, who has overseen the case and refereed objections by outside groups since a preliminary deal was announced in January. The settlement was originally set to be finalized March 1, but Macdonald extended the public comment period after pressure from Dearborn lawyer Majed Moughni, who criticized the class-action settlement on Facebook and was temporarily barred from communicating publicly about the case.

Ahmed’s portion of the settlement is considered an “incentive award” and represents his work on the case, his attorneys say.

“As a firm, we’ve borne the burden of litigating this case for over 19 months, and have paid a steep price in time and money to do so,” Kassem Dakhlallah, an attorney whose firm represents Ahmed and the class, told The Associated Press in an email. “We are happy that we are able to finalize this case and get the settlement funds paid to the Huda Clinic to be used for medical care for the community, and to the Arab American National Museum to be used to allow our young ones to continue their educations after high school.”

Macdonald said she was “proud to preside over” the long case and resolution reached by both sides.

The lawsuit technically covered anyone who bought the halal-advertised products between September 2005 and January from the restaurant and another McDonald’s in the city with a different owner. The other location wasn’t a defendant or a focus of the investigation.

Dakhlallah has said he was approached by Ahmed, and they conducted an investigation. A letter sent to McDonald’s and the restaurant franchisee, Finley’s Management, by Dakhlallah’s firm said Ahmed had “confirmed from a source familiar with the inventory” that the restaurant had sold non-halal food “on many occasions.”

In the settlement notice, Finley’s Management said it “has a carefully designed system for preparing and serving halal such that halal chicken products are labeled, stored, refrigerated, and cooked in halal-only areas.” The company added it trains its employees on preparing halal food and “requires strict adherence to the process.”

McDonald’s attorney Thomas McNeill said the investigations and negotiations proved that if a problem arose, “it was isolated and rare.”

Dakhlallah said giving money to the charities is the best outcome, since most people wouldn’t have kept their receipts, making “identifying class members who have valid claims nearly impossible.”

Moughni argues that Dakhlallah and his colleagues could have made greater attempts to find those who were harmed and, failing that, identified more relevant organizations, such as Dearborn’s public schools. He said the clinic is several miles away from the restaurant and the museum has nothing to do with halal food.

There are only two McDonald’s in the United States that sell halal products and both are in Dearborn, which has one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities. Overall, the Detroit area is home to about 150,000 Muslims of many ethnicities.

FOREST, VA—An informant with the New York Police Department (NYPD) , who worked for eight years undercover in Muslim American compounds, reveals that the group known as Muslims of the Americas has been training its members to wage jihad—holy war—against American citizens for decades, and has created a secret jihadi army within the United States.

The undercover informant, Ali Aziz of New York, was drafted by the NYPD to inform on Muslims of the Americas (MOA) as part of a long-term, ongoing surveillance program of potential Islamic terrorist activity conducted by the NYPD.

Aziz, who said he wants to tell his story and put an end to his double life, insists he has given enough information of criminal activity—including guerilla training exercises; stockpiling illegal weapons; welfare fraud; physical abuse of women, children and elderly MOA members; forced polygamous marriages—to law enforcement to shut down the camps.

“It’s very simple,” Ali says in the book. “MOA is asleep. They are asleep. They are a bomb.”

MOA was founded in the 1980s by Sheikh Gilani as a front group for the more radical terrorist network known as Jamaat Al Fuqra (“community of the impoverished”). The group has recruited mostly from the black community, beginning in New York City where Gilani began cementing power. Since then, Al Fuqra has been linked to at least 17 terrorist-related crimes in the United States going back to the 1980s, among them welfare fraud, white-collar crimes, gun running, firebombing, drug crimes, weapons crimes and murder.

An Al Fuqra member was convicted in 2009 of murdering a rival imam in Tucson, Ariz., in 1990, after stabbing him at least 19 times. The group was also involved in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the Day of Terror plot in 1993—in which numerous New York City landmarks, including the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, were targeted for attack.

In Twilight in America, Aziz describes his work as an undercover informant for the NYPD, how they promised to make his immigration problems go away if he would provide them with information about his associates within MOA.

“This is what the NYPD had wanted for the past 20 years,” Aziz said of his move to the Hancock, New York, headquarters of MOA. “They wanted someone living inside the Hancock camp who’s an undercover informant.”

Aziz’s martial arts skills were highly valued within MOA, and they drafted him to help train recruits and members. Because of his education and ability to speak both Arabic and English, Aziz worked closely with the MOA leadership, including Hancock leader Barry (Hussein) Adams, who Aziz says will one day become the leader of MOA worldwide.

Crimes committed by MOA members go beyond financial, drug running and thievery, Aziz revealed. “A lot of the children that grow up there become drug dealers. Some become murderers …

“I was providing information to the NYPD about people who committed some very serious crimes. I’m talking about … What is the worse crime you can commit?

“I have evidence … bad people. And people got hurt very badly. And guess what? The crimes haven’t been solved. The NYPD can solve these crimes. They could solve them. They have the evidence.”

It’s unclear how many MOA compounds are in existence today. At one time the State Department identified 35 compounds in rural areas of the United States, including: Philadelphia, Pa.; Fairfax, Va.; Redhouse, Va.; York, S.C.; Commerce, Ga.; Jessup, Ga.; Buena Vista, Co. (raided and shut down in 1992); Baladulla, Ca. (raided and shut down in 2002); and more.

As noted above, several compounds been shut down after law enforcement raids discovered illegal activity being conducted. Others have purposely disbanded, according to Aziz, with members assimilating into nearby neighborhoods. This is what Aziz meant when he said “they are asleep,” according to the author.

The most shocking revelation came when Aziz told the author of Twilight in America that MOA has formed a secret army within the United States ready to carry out Sheikh Gilani’s orders. Although he said MOA no longer does “mass military training” at its camps—because they know they are being watched by law enforcement—they still have members ready to be called up.

“It’s like a formed military squad,” Aziz says in the book. “It’s certain groups. Certain individuals. Certain names. Certain guys. It is a very, very select group they have. It’s a lot of people. But it’s not like they train every day. It’s various people training in different positions.”

Twilight in America also delves into the kidnapping, beheading and dismemberment in 2002 of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl was in Pakistan investigating links between the shoebomber (Richard Reid) and Al Fuqra/MOA. Pearl was on his way to an interview in Pakistan with Sheikh Gilani when he was kidnapped. Although Gilani was briefly detained and questioned in 2002 in Pakistan following Pearl’s death, he was released and never charged. In his book, Mawyer researches the links between the self-confessed murderer of Pearl, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Gilani and other terrorists involved in the kidnapping.

“Muslims of the Americas pretends to be a peaceful organization of poor Muslims who want to live separated from the rest of the world, free to practice their religion away from American influences,” says author Mawyer. “Nothing could be further from the truth. There are so many connections to terrorist activity, not to mention connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and proven, prosecuted acts of terrorism, white-collar crime and outright murder, that law enforcement needs to shut these camps down.”

Mawyer believes the information provided by Aziz, as well as other undercover informants, is more than enough to raid the camps, rescue the abused members, and shut them down—but law enforcement at all levels is afraid to act against them for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim.

“I hope this book is a wake-up call to American citizens,” said Mawyer. “It is not a question of being anti-Muslim to investigate and shut these camps. It is a question of being anti-terrorism … and keeping America safe.”

Mawyer is the founder and President of Christian Action Network, a non-profit public advocacy and education group based in Lynchburg, Virginia. Mawyer has authored several books, including Silent Shame, The Pro-Family Contract With America and Pathways to Success. He has also produced a number of documentary films, including Homegrown Jihad,Islam Rising, Sacrificed Survivors and America’s Islamic Threat. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Larry King Live, Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, NBC’s Today Show and Entertainment Tonight.

Co-Author Patti A. Pierucci is an award-winning journalist and documentary scriptwriter. She has worked as a ghostwriter for numerous national personalities, including members of Congress.

Martin Mawyer is the Founder and President of Christian Action Network, a non-profit public advocacy and education group based in Lynchburg, Virginia. He began his career as a freelance journalist and has authored several books, including “Silent Shame,” “The Pro-Family Contract With America,” “Pathways to Success,” and his most recent, “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamic Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” He has produced a number of documentary films, including Homegrown Jihad,Islam Rising, Sacrificed Survivors and America’s Islamic Threat. Mawyer has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Larry King Live, Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, NBC’s Today Show, Entertainment Tonight and Fox and Friends. His latest book, “Twilight in America,” co-authored by Patti A. Pierucci, details the activities of Islamic terrorist training camps scattered throughout the United States. It can be purchased at TwilightInAmerica.com or Amazon.com in book or Kindle version

“Hlayhel, who also serves as the part time imam of the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley led the lawmakers and all those in attendance through the reading of al-Fatiha…”

The Fatihah, the first sura of the Qur’an, contains this:

“Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.” (1:6-7)

The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s book Islam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians.

The classic Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.”

Ibn Kathir’s understanding of this passage is not a lone “extremist” interpretation. In fact, most Muslim commentators believe that the Jews are those who have earned Allah’s wrath and the Christians are those who have gone astray. This is the view of Tabari, Zamakhshari, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, the Tanwir al-Miqbas min Tafsir Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Arabi, as well as Ibn Kathir. One contrasting, but not majority view, is that of Nisaburi, who says that “those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are the people of negligence, and those who have gone astray are the people of immoderation.”

Wahhabis drew criticism a few years back for adding “such as the Jews” and “such as the Christians” into parenthetical glosses on this passage in Qur’ans printed in Saudi Arabia. Some Western commentators imagined that the Saudis originated this interpretation, and indeed the whole idea of Qur’anic hostility toward Jews and Christians. They found it inconceivable that Muslims all over the world would learn as a matter of course that the central prayer of their faith anathematizes Jews and Christians.

But unfortunately, this interpretation is venerable and mainstream in Islamic theology. The printing of the interpretation in parenthetical glosses into a translation would be unlikely to affect Muslim attitudes, since the Arabic text is always and everywhere normative in any case, and since so many mainstream commentaries contain the idea that the Jews and Christians are being criticized here. Seventeen times a day, by the pious. And in the Arizona State Senate, with the willing participation of the foolish kuffar.

On Thursday, February 7th, 2013 – the Arizona State Senate’s prayer invocation was led by Anas Hlayhel – the Chairman of the Arizona Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-AZ.)Hlayhel, who also serves as the part time imam of the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley led the lawmakers and all those in attendance through the reading of al-Fatiha (the opening chapter of the Holy Quran) in addition to an additional prayer thereafter….

Brennan retails a benign, positive view of jihad that completely ignores the teaching of all the Islamic schools of jurisprudence, which agree that jihad, among its other meanings, involves warfare against unbelievers in order to subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law.

“Islam ‘Helped to Shape’ CIA Nominee John Brennan’s World View,” by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, January 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):

(CNSNews.com) – As a college student in the 1970s, John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, traveled in Indonesia where – he recalled in a speech in New York in 2010 – “despite my long hair, my earring and my obvious American appearance, I was welcomed throughout that country, in a way that is a reflection of the tremendous warmth of Islamic cultures and societies.”

Brennan’s Feb. 13, 2010 address to a meeting at the Islamic Center at New York University, facilitated by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), provided an insight into his views on Islam, a faith which he said during the speech had “helped to shape my own world view.”

Travels around the world over more than three decades had taught him about “the goodness and beauty of Islam,” said Brennan, whose 25-year career at the CIA until 2005 included a stint as station chief in Riyadh.

“Like the president during his childhood years in Jakarta, I came to see Islam not how it is often misrepresented, but for what it is – how it is practiced every day, by well over a billion Muslims worldwide, a faith of peace and tolerance and great diversity.”

In the speech, during which he drew applause after speaking in Arabic for more than a minute, Brennan used terms evidently designed to appeal to his audience, such as “Al-Quds” for Jerusalem, “Palestine” and “as the Qur’an reveals” – in keeping with the Muslim belief that the Qur’an was “revealed” directly by Allah to Mohammed through the angel Jibril (Gabriel).

He condemned what he said were negative stereotypes in the U.S. about Muslims and hostility towards Islam, adding that government actions and policies had contributed to the problem but saying this would change under Obama….

As Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, Brennan – a Jesuit-educated Catholic – has played a prominent role in the administration’s outreach to Muslims, American Muslims especially. He has also been a leading proponent of the effort to stop using terms many Muslims find offensive, such as “jihadist” as a descriptor for terrorists acting in the name of Islam.

“They are not jihadists,” he told the NYU audience in 2010, “for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify, for a legitimate purpose. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.”

Brennan had made similar comments the previous August, telling a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that “describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term ‘jihad’ – which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal – risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

The administration’s National Security Strategy, released three months after the NYU speech, repeatedly used variations of the phrase “al-Qaeda and its affiliates” in identifying the enemy. The term “jihadist” and did not appear in the 52-page document and the word “Islam” appeared twice – the U.S. was not fighting a war against Islam, it said, and “neither Islam nor any other religion condones the slaughter of innocents.”

(By contrast the Bush administration’s 2006 NSS stated that “the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century,” although it also said that Islam “has been twisted and made to serve an evil end.”)

When he previewed the NSS document in a speech several days before the launch, Brennan said, “Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is but a tactic. Nor do we describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”

Newspapers in the Islamic world routinely use the term “jihadist” (or, in South Asia, “jihadi”) in their news reporting on terrorist acts, without suggesting that the term has been misappropriated.